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Monday, December 19, 2011

Byzantium in the 3rd Millenium

My brother has been telling me about
his Fading suns Game, GMed by Spielmiester. So I can't help but
fantasize and re-imagine fading suns after all this time. This got me thinking a lot. I began writing about knights and how I would refine the ideas in light of what I have learned.

In summary I began thinking about the role of Knights in this Futuristic Dark Age. I began to write about how a futuristic Dark Age would look like, and how would does economic truths hold in this setting. It got really interesting, especially since a lot of my all my studies were applicable. It was re-imagining the world using a TL8 view of the future and trends, plus the lessons of a TL8 perspective.

One of the things that defined a knight is his/her creation and role. His role to his Stronghold and Household, and his role to his overlord and house. I got carried away defining relationships, the norms, the deviations and the general expectations of much of the setting. I guess its striking a balance of clarity without having to go into such great detail as to narrow the definition is where my errors and self edits got me bogged down.

As I re-imagined the setting, I stumbled on away to make science appear like magic and psionics. I all got inspired by my lessons in cognition and how mnemonics of sufficient complexity and effectivity can turn out like magic, activating deeply embedded and discrete technologically imbued abilities.

I stumbled on an interesting idea: Psions and Scions, as only great houses had access to the most potent of technologically imbued abilities and how marriage alliances served another role of trying to activate powerful dormant abilities. This idea is not new, but what is new is how I defined superhuman abilities as related to their technological equivalents.

What became an recurring economic element is that in the Fall of man, technological and information monopoly concentrated an incredible amount of power to a few individuals. In the Dark Ages, where humanity is at its weakest and most desperate state, suspicion and over-riding self-interest has made a stellar human expanse of much greater scarcity.

There are remnant technologies, types created to exist outside the infrastructure pyramid, in the form of Psionics and Magery, unfortunately humanity fell to the dark ages before this was spread and perfected. Humanity has to rebuild, but having experience greater levels of human tragedy and desperation, and bridge incredible technological gap and physical barriers.

Humanity spread out through the stars, occupying many inhospitable worlds that through a sophisticated trade, specialization, and technological network were made habitable. In the Dark Ages, much of humanity perished, when this infrastructure collapsed. Those that survived now live in underground strongholds, like the self-sustaining fiefs of old.

From the surviving megacorporations came the Great Houses Emerged. From what was the remnants of Stellar Order, a pan stellar organization that allowed the diversity of humanity to come together and have diplomatic and economic ties (like the UN), came the Stellar Church. The few democracies that survived, became the Guilds.

All my works are Creative Commons

The material presented here is my original creation, intended for use with the GURPS system from Steve Jackson Games. This material is not official and is not endorsed by Steve Jackson Games.

GURPS is a registered trademark of Steve Jackson Games, and the art here is copyrighted by Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by SJ Games. This material is used here in accordance with the SJ Games online policy.